Happy Valentine's Day!

It's that time of year again! Yes, it's Valentine's day in TWO days (or one in my case since it just turned 12)! What are your plans this year? Another trip out to dinner or busting your brains out trying to buy something for your significant other? How about something hand made? The most endearing always comes from the heart, as cheesy as it may sound: it's the thought that really counts. Everyone is on a budget these past years because of the economic down turn and everyone's watching their budget. So I decided to come up with a cheap, but cute solution in making a gift for your special someone under $10!

This year, I decided to make personalized letters with homemade cupcakes for my boyfriend! Each letter will contain tibits of the memories that we shared starting from the first day we met 15 months ago.

Materials Needed:
- Tissue Paper
- Construction Paper
- Fabric Paint (choice of your own color)
- Small Mail Box
- Small paper box
- Cupcake cups
- Cupcake ingredients
- Chocolates/Or any small sweets

All of the materials can be purchased at your nearest Target!

Make sure that you have a design in mind for your blank canvas that is the mini mailbox. The mailbox will act as a carrier for your letters! You can draw it out or just have an image in your head. I preferably just draw it from memory. But you can always take a pencil and draw out the design lightly on the mailbox. So, after you've planned out what design you'll be drawing out, carefully take the fabric paint and gently begin tracing out the patterns that you've laid out. If you make a mistake, no worries, take a Q-Tip and just lightly scrape it off. When you've finished just place it aside and let it dry. It'll take about 10-15 minutes for it to completely dry off.
How mine turned out:

As the mailbox is left in its drying process let's begin with the letters. You can take just about any color (I usually go with a thematic palette). Cut it up to about 2.5 x 3 inches. The designs are all up to you guys, I just went with what ever came to mind. Perhaps you can go with stripes or stars, hearts, or just plain circles. Here's my example, my first one I picked a red background with a white foreground and I had heart cutouts that decorated the edges. (The white foreground is about 1/4 inch smaller than the red one)


The messages are, as I said before, memories from our past dates that we went on or those small but memorable memories that I've shared with him. The rest of my letters turned out like this:


I wrote about 5 letters and after they're done, your mailbox should be done drying by now. Take it and place the letters inside and they should fit perfectly. For the rest of the space, take a sheet of tissue paper (I suggest another color that is not the mailbox)fold it loosely into about 4 folds and stuff it lightly into the mailbox leaving a few holes that'll allow you to put candy inside. My boyfriend loves sweets so I bought something we could both share on Valentine's day and I came upon Hershey's: cookies and creme. The chocolate/sweets choice will also be up to you and what you think will be a good choice for him/her. Just make sure it's not a large chocolate bar... Hahaha! Or else it definitely won't fit. Take a few in hand and toss it in:

Your mailbox and letters are done! Now let's go to the next process: the cupcake gift box. The thing about Target is that you can always find good things at the $1 section. I found a nice small gift basket there that'll fit the cupcakes that I'll be making later on this weekend. But the basket was a bit too deep so in order to give it that high elevation look I dumped in a mass of hershey's that will be acting as my ground foundation.


Then take another sheet of tissue paper, pick it up from the center and twist leaving a stem out for you to hold.

Then place this into the gift basket you've prepared and it should mold into the shape quite nicely since it's such thin paper.

Voila! Put the cupcakes in once you're done baking! You have your mailbox carrier, letters, and cupcake holder as a gift set for your boyfriend/girlfriend! I'll have the results (with the cupcake decor steps) up in another post later this week! :)

Time: 20-30 min

Money Spent: $9